The present invention relates to a roof structure of an automotive vehicle which comprises a front roof, a rear roof, and a glass unit including a rear-window glass.
Conventionally, a structure disclosed in US Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0283286 A1 is known as the above-described roof structure of the automotive vehicle. That is, this is the roof structure of the automotive vehicle comprising roof members including a front roof and a back roof equipped with a rear roof and a rear-window glass and a link mechanism configured to change a position of the roof members between its use position (a roof closed position) and its storing position (a roof open position), wherein the back roof is pivotally connected to the front roof and a vehicle-body side member, respectively, so as to serve as a first link of a four-joint link which comprises first and second links.
In the conventional structure of the above-described patent document, since the front roof, the rear roof, and the rear-window glass can be closed concurrently, the rear-window glass does not become unstable, and therefore there is no problem with the conventional structure in particular.
Meanwhile, a structure in which the glass unit including the rear-window glass and the rear roof are liked with each other by a link and the front roof is connected to the rear roof via a link mechanism may be considered. In this case, the glass unit is needed to have a substantially-fixed state when the front roof is closed. Therefore, if it does not have the substantially-fixed state when the front roof is closed, the glass unit may become unstable, so that the front roof may be unstable because of a load of the glass unit.
Accordingly, in the structure in which the glass unit including the rear-window glass and the rear roof are liked with each other by the link and the front roof is connected to the rear roof via the link mechanism, it may be difficult that layout flexibility and link-design flexibility are compatibly attained.